Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] Read Free

another bad thing about Jubal. If you do—I’ll take Amy and the wagon and leave you sitting right here. Do you understand, Papa?”
    Elija snorted. “Back to that, are ya? Well, there ain’t no use arguin’ with a woman like ya are.” He shook his head. “Ya sure like shootin’ off yore mouth, but ya never listen to a word a body says. I might jist as well hush my mouth ’n save my breath.” He tied one of the horses behind the wagon and moved the oxen up in front and hitched them.
    “Yes. Save it and use it to help me get this wagon someplace where we can build a fire, if not for Jubal’s sake, then for yours and Amy’s.” She picked up a stick and struck the patient ox on the rump. “Get to humping, Molly. Move on out, Sally.” The oxen strained at the yoke and slowly pulled the heavy wagon out of the mud and onto a trail that ran between trees so thick one could scarcely see twenty feet into their depth. “Amy,” Liberty called once they were moving, “how is Jubal?”
    Amy came out of the wagon and climbed onto the seat. “He’s sleepin’, but he makes a awful racket.”
    Liberty looked at her shivering sister. There was a scared, peaked look on her freckled face. Good heavens! She had forgotten how it upset Amy for her to argue with their father. Oh, God, she prayed. Please don’t let Amy get sick. Liberty’s greatest fear was that something would happen to Amy. Next was the fear that Stith Lenning would follow them into the wilderness.
    “You’re all wet, love. Get back in there, put on something dry, and stay out of the rain. You don’t have to be afraid you’ll catch what Jubal has. Those ignorant louts that left us here wouldn’t know lung sickness from the pox.”
    “Aren’t you hungry, Libby?”
    “Sure, I am. We’ll be out of this bog soon. There’s a rise up ahead where I think we can stop. Papa should be able to find some dry wood for a fire under that thick stand of trees and I’ll fix us something hot. We’ll spend the day there. The wagons up ahead can’t make time in weather like this either.”
    Liberty walked beside the oxen. Her long homespun dress was wet. It molded her shoulders and high pert breasts and clung to her slender thighs as she walked. She was not a tall girl, but her erectness and the proud way she carried her head made her seem tall. Her face was smooth and slightly tanned, a perfect oval frame for her straight, golden brown brows and large, clear, deep set eyes that were as blue as the feathers on a young bluejaw. Her slightly tilted nose and soft, red mouth were just there in her face, because it was her curly blond hair, a legacy from her Swedish mother, that drew one’s attention. She wore it parted in the middle, and now it hung to her hips in two long, soggy braids that were secured at the ends by a heavy linen string. In the rain the short hair about her face curled in ringlets so tight they resembled small corkscrews plastered to her forehead.
    Back in Middlecrossing no one paid much attention to the color of her hair because there were so many blonds among the Dutch and Swedish families in the area. But the farther west they came, the more it was noticed, and in Louisville the rivermen had hooted and whistled when the string broke and her bonnet went sailing in the wind.
    Liberty guided the oxen to a place where the branches of two huge oaks intermingled, making a canopy under which they could park the wagon. She could see where another wagon had parked in this place and where the traveler had left a circle of stones, made to enclose a cookfire.
    She hoisted her skirts and climbed into the wagon as soon as she picketed the extra horse. Amy had changed her clothes and put on one of their father’s old buckskin shirts that hung below her knees. She climbed out onto the wagon seat and down the wheel to the ground.
    “Jubal, are you awake?” Liberty knelt down and peered into his face.
    “Libby?” he said weakly and groped for her hand. He